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June 2009

June 17, 2009

Here is some old wisdom truth about harming the shared habitat that we all depend upon for our health, happiness and security.

Our sages taught:

A man should not move stones from his ground to public ground.

A certain man was moving stones from his ground onto public ground when a pious man found him doing so and said to him, “Fool, why do you move stones from ground which is not yours to ground which is yours?”

The man laughed at him.

Some days later, the man had to sell his ﬁeld, and when he was walking on that public ground he stumbled over those stones.

He then said, “How well did that pious man say to me, ‘Why do you move stones from ground which is not yours to ground which is yours?’ ”

—Talmud Bavli, Masekhet Bava Kama 50b

Do you have any other old wisdom references that support our need to take care of creation? Please leave in the comments.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

June 16, 2009

One of our culture's big challenges is the corporate structure, of course.

The problem is that the owners of the corporations--the shareholders--stand to benefit from from their actions but, because of the principle of limited liability, cannot be held accountable for their crimes.

Shareholders can never be held personally accountable for their corporation's environmental and social malfeasance. On the other hand, the shareholders do benefit from the malfeasance if the corporation profits by it.

CEO's of corporations, therefore, must make profits but need never worry about insulating the owners from how those profits are made.

Make a single-skinned oil-tanker good and cheaply and shareholders benefit from the reduced cost through increased profits. Crash the cheap tanker and spill millions of gallons of oil on the beach and the shareholders grumble about lost profit but no one can hold them responsible for damage done by their property.

This structure makes environmental and social problems caused by corporations hard to solve. The owners have unlimited upside but limited downside. That's a structure that can't even be considered to be based on free-market economics because the market indicators are stymied. There's an artificial floor on the shareholder's losses.

Maybe it's time we found a different ownership structure for business, one where owners were considered responsible for damage done by their property.

Anyway, I'm reading a book called Life, Inc by Douglas Rushkoff. It's a history of corporations. He has a brilliant quote when talking about the birth of the chartered corporation. He says:

[With the birth of the chartered corporation] the emphasis of business would shift from the creation of value by people to the extraction of value by corporations.

Watch Rushkoff explaining the origins of the corporate structure below:

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

June 15, 2009

There is a climate bill that has the potential to come to the floor of the House of Representatives by July. It is called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (HR 2454), known as ACES. Read a summary here. In this post, I'm going to tell you why I support the bill.

Let me first address myself to those of my friends and readers who are not fans of government intervention and regulation:

There is no way to make the necessary reductions in our carbon use by individual action alone. Even if we use no electricity in our homes, buy nothing new, eat only local, we are still responsible for the carbon emissions of the society we live in--those caused by our local, state and national government, the military, the corporations we buy from, etc.

There is no way to get all these institutions--including the electricity companies--to adequately reduce their carbon emissions unless we the people tell them they have to. Wherever you stand on Big Government, we have to agree that there are times when government does have a job to do. Reducing carbon emissions to ameliorate the effects of global warming is one of those times.

Now, allow myself to address myself to those of you who are upset that ACES has been and will be further weakened by industrial interests in Washington. I was told by a Washington insider that Exxon Mobil alone has 5,000 lobbyists crawling around the Capitol trying to water down the bill.

As the 1SKy analysis of the bill says:

It is clear given recent changes since the discussion draft was released that Big Oil, Dirty Coal, and other polluters are continuously working to riddle this bill with loopholes, water it down, and keep America dependent on dirty fuels like oil and coal. In the last three months alone, fossil fuel companies have outspent environmental groups 16 to 1 on capitol hill. The industries spent $79 million to lobby Congress, outspending the green community’s comparatively meager $4.7 million in the same time period.

Lots of folks are justifiably concerned that if ACES passes, then the United States will be able to falsely reassure itself that it has done its job on climate change when it has not. Therefore, these people believe, ACES should not be passed. We should wait until we have something better.

I sympathize, but I disagree.

ACES is the only chance we have to pass a climate bill before the international negotiations to finalize a worldwide climate treaty in Copenhagen in December of this year. If the United States--one of the two largest emitters of greenhouse gasses--does not demonstrate that it is willing to get serious about climate, then there is diminished incentive for anyone else, like the Chinese, to get serious.

Secondly, if ACES fails, then there is unlikely to be another attempt to do something about greenhouse gas emissions for an entire year, until the 2010 midterm elections have passed. In other words, ACES, as compromised as it may turn out to be, may be our only chance to do something about climate as a nation before November 2010.

For these two reasons, I support ACES, warts and all, and I hope all of you--Democrat and Republican included--will support ACES, too. It's not perfect for a lot of reasons. But it's a first step. We can do more later.

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

June 12, 2009

Hey kids. Just wanted to say I need a rest tonight. See you on Monday!

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

June 11, 2009

First of all, I wanted to remind you all that there is a sneak peak at the No Impact Man documentary in New York tonight (Thursday). Click here for details. I hope I'll see you there. It'll be outdoors if the weather is nice and indoors if it's not, so rain or shine! Now, onwards...

I am sitting in the lobby of my hotel which is the only place I can get an internet connection. Behind the couch I'm sitting on, the hotel keeps a little radio playing that is tuned to a classical station. The music makes me think of Isabella, the four-year-old girl who is the heart of my life, my daughter. Isabella always makes me stop turning the radio dial when she hears classical music. She loves classical best of all.

Anyway. The hotel where I am is in Washington, DC.

I began writing this post with the point of telling you why I'm in DC, but I can't help it--I want to write a little something about my little girl. Do you mind if I stop to tell you that she has the most amazing blue eyes? Also, she is incredibly brave. We went to a petting zoo the other day and she fed all the goats and cows and sheep. A pig bit her by mistake. When she went to school, she showed her thumb to a teacher and said, "A pig bit my thumb."

"A what bit your thumb?"

"A pig."

"A what?"

"A pig."

This went on for a while. There not being too many pigs in New York City, the teacher was having a hard time believing her ears. Isabella was quite pleased. It may have hurt when the pig first bit her, but Isabella was still the only kid in school who could point to a boo boo and say a pig caused it.

You know what I think about when I think about how much I love Isabella? I think about how everybody else has someone they love too. I think that we all have someone who makes our hearts ache with love and how since we all have that then we must be essentially the same.

We're all the same. How can I live my life with enough compassion to bear out this tremendous truth that we all have an Isabella, that we are all the same? If we are all the same, shouldn't we understand how much we all feel joy and sorrow and be moved to treat each other with tremendous kindness?

Personally, I am moved to treat everyone with tremendous kindness. The sad news is that, moved though I may be, I don't actually do it. I get mad or selfish or controlling or small minded. Then I get mean. Honestly, I am at times so disappointed in myself, in my own humanity. Then I realize that that happens to everyone else too. We all feel disappointed in ourselves sometimes, no? We have that in common, too.

Which brings me back to the fact that we're all the same.

We're none of us perfect, right? But most of us, I think, are doing our best.

Anyway.

I'm in Washington, DC because tomorrow I am meeting--along with the associate director of the new No Impact Project and some other colleagues--with representatives from a group of environmental non-profits to discuss how the No Impact Man book and film might best be used to help engage people in environmentalism.

Lots of ideas are being thrown around. A don't-drink-bottled-water campaign. A stop-eating-beef campaign. A ride-your-bike-more campaign. All based around aspects of the No Impact Man year. It's amazing to have come to the place where the No Impact Man year might actually be used to help engage citizens in environmentalism.

But one thing I don't want to lose site of is this: that, for me, whether it is less meat or bike more or whatever the campaign might be, the whole reason for doing it is to make the planet--our habitat--more livable for people I may not even know.

And why do I want to make the planet more livable for people I don't know? Because those people love an Isabella, just like me. Because those people want to do the right thing but their personalities get the better of them just like me. Because everyone bleeds when they're cut and will die when we're old, just like me.

We're all the same. It's so sad and wonderful, but it's true. We're all the same.

PS Can I tell you something that brings tears to my eyes? That up in the bedrooms of this hotel are a whole team of people who are gathered here to help promote the values espoused by the No Impact Man year. People try so hard. So many of us are searching to try to do what is right. We're the same in that way too, don't you think?

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

June 09, 2009

There are all sorts of reasons to farm food in the cities--reduction of the heat island effect, local food production, keeping storm water out of the waterways. But something happened to me the other day as a result of growing vegetables in my new garden plot that I wasn't counting on.

It's been a dark winter and a pretty rainy spring. I've been waiting for the sun. And still the rain comes.

When I was little, when it rained, my grandmother would always say, "Well, it's good for the farmers." And I would give lip service and say, "That's true," and then I'd feel bad about the fact that I really didn't care about the farmers. I just wanted sun.

For thirty years, I pretty much just wanted sun.

But the other day, when it rained, I wasn't disappointed. I'd seen the difference to my new community garden plot after watering with a hose versus a soaking with a good rain. One keeps it alive. The other makes it thrive.

Living in the city, we don't have as much connection to nature as we should. But keeping my new vegetable plot at Laguardia Community Gardens, the thing I wasn't counting on was that I suddenly discovered a new gratitude for the cycles of nature. I was grateful for how the world works. I was grateful for the rain.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

June 08, 2009

This is a guest post by Michelle, my wife, via her blog post at BusinessWeek. It is about a wonderful example of how what's better for the planet can also be better for the people.

I pedaled into the BusinessWeek mothership this morning on my
three-wheeled rickshaw, a.k.a. one of the deep and true and
I-swoon-over-it-daily loves of my life.

Public policy planners call this “active transportation”: when a
metropolis-dweller like me, all flabbed up with winter layers, uses my
bodily self to get me to work as opposed to sitting in a car or hopping
on a train. This is lifestyle redesign par excellence: taking what was
once a wasted dead zone—a study in sedentary—and turning into a
meditative mini workout. Free transportation plus free calorie burn
plus faster commute equals a net net net positive gain.

What was different about this morning’s commute was that I took a
tour through the new Times Square. Over Memorial Day Weekend, NYC
Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan—she of the
smashing capes and hipster-bureacrat brain—had her people use some
paint, some traffic barriers, and some chairs to transform a sliver of
Broadway into a neon-swathed simulacrum of Piazza San Marco, the famous
Venetian no-car zone. That’s Sadik-Khan above, courtesy of New York
Magazine, looking all leggy on a photo-shopped runway of grass.

Car lovers, business owners, parking garage moguls and cabbies were
at first apoplectic. But here’s the delicious truth of this new Piazza
for the People. If the experiment bears out the research, it will make
the experience of Times Square better for everyone. The plan is
projected to actually cut traffic, congestion and pollution while at
the same time making what was once one of the most dangerous triangles
for pedestrians a far safer, more liveable space.

So much talk of sustainability hinges on being less bad. Less
plastic. Less packaging. Less resource use. But less bad isn’t the
answer. The true value comes from delivering more good.

What the new Times Square represents is an eco hat trick: a win for pedestrians, for drivers, and the environment.

Sadik-Khan, a former senior vice-president of the international
engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff, is a case for optimism because
she is blending the Jane Jacobs idea of the sidewalk as community
mash-up with the ambitions to do for New York’s sustainbility movement
what the last century’s planners did for the age of the
combustion-engine and asphalt.

A green Robert Moses.

Already, Times Square is a quieter, less noisy, more liveable place.
Change is wrenching. But in the macro view, such public space makeovers
are one of those no-cost structural changes that delivers more good, as
detailed in the excellent new book from Jeff Mapes called Pedaling Revolution.

For her part, Sadik-Khan took her cues from Copenhagen, widely known
as perhaps the best designed city on the planet. You can read more
about her in the recent profile in New York Magazine.

The title of the New York magazine story was something I got a taste of this morning: Honk, Honk, Aaah.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

June 05, 2009

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

June 04, 2009

OK, sorry, this is only for New Yorkers, but see below for the first non-movie-festival chance to see No Impact Man, The Documentary. Good news for everyone else: The film will roll out across the country in September, along with the book.

Anyway, details below:

The Fledgling Fund is co-sponsoring a very special sneak peak of No
Impact Man on Thursday June 11th on the lawn of Automotive High School
in Brooklyn. Presented by Rooftop Films, the screening will feature
live performances by the Hungry March Band, a local foods cooking
tutorial, a demonstration of biodiesel cars from the students of our
host, and much much more. This outdoor screening starts at 8pm, and we
invite you all to come! To purchase tickets, please visit
www.rooftopfilms.com.

THURSDAY JUNE 11Rooftop Films & The Fledgling Fund presentNO IMPACT MANA
local family drama with global implications: the inspirational (and
controversial) No Impact Man (and family) challenge themselves to make
no environmental impact for one year. Rooftop and The Fledgling Fund
invite you to join the challenge.

OPEN BAR AFTER PARTY FOLLOWING THE SCREENING FOR ALL IN ATTENDANCE

Venue: On the lawn of Automotive High SchoolAddress: 50 Bedford Ave. @ North 13th St. (Williamsburg, Brooklyn)Directions: L to Bedford Ave. or G to Nassau Ave.Rain: In the event of rain the show will be held indoors at the same location8:00PM: Doors open8:30PM: Sound Fix presents live music by The Hungry March Band9:00PM: Films11:30PM-1:00AM: After-party: Open Bar at Matchless (557 Manhattan Ave. @ Driggs) Courtesy of Radeberger PilsnerTickets: $9 at the door or online

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

June 03, 2009

Hey folks, one of my favorite organizations involved with engaging citizens in making our habitat safe is having a fundraiser.

New York's Lower East Side Ecology Center works towards a more sustainable New York City by providing community-based recycling and composting programs, developing local stewardship of green space, and increasing community awareness through environmental education programs.

I mention LESEC in my forthcoming book as a world-class model for citizen engagement.

Celebration by
the East River will take place at the Amphitheater, in the
southern part of East River Park, across the FDR Drive from
Corlears Hook Park at the intersection of Jackson and Cherry Streets.

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Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.